From Video Games to the Film Set: Nazzal Naseer's Story

Nazzal Naseer didn’t plan on working in film. He studied electrical engineering in university and had a background in programming, but what he really wanted was to tell stories. Unreal Engine turned out to be how he got there.

He works on Epic Games’ education team, where he builds the training content that helps instructors teach Unreal Engine, a tool originally built for making video games that lets you build and render realistic 3D worlds in real time. That same tool is increasingly showing up on film sets, where productions use it to project virtual environments onto LED walls instead of shooting against a traditional green screen. He got into the video game industry in university, building virtual sets for esports broadcasts. But games themselves weren’t really the draw for Nazzal. It was the idea of working with interactive, real-time 3D tools to tell stories.

That clicked for him during the pandemic, when a friend told him how The Mandalorian used Unreal Engine to render backgrounds on LED walls in real time.

“That was my lightbulb moment,” he says. “I don’t have to necessarily get into games if I wanted to do storytelling with game engines.”

Finding The Mosquers

On a whim, he applied to the Mosquers Rising Leaders Fellowship, a three-month mentorship program for emerging Muslim creatives in the screen industry. Mosquers paired him with Edmonton Screen’s Film Commissioner, Dorian Rowe, for one-on-one mentorship over a few months, and that’s where he worked out his capstone project: a pre-visualization workshop for indie studios on using Unreal Engine to plan shots before they get on set.

His background wasn’t something Mosquers had to work around. It’s why they selected him as one of nine fellows chosen across Canada, and the only one based in Edmonton. Film and TV are leaning into video games more than ever, and Mosquers would rather get ahead of that shift than catch up to it later.

“Games are becoming an increasingly important part of the screen industry, and we want to support that growth,” says Rhia Aden, Mosquers’ Executive Director.

On Set With Northern Gateway Films

From there, things took a turn he didn’t expect. Dorian connected him with Dylan Pearce at Northern Gateway Films, currently in production on Legends, a film blending live action with sequences set inside MythForce, a video game developed by Edmonton-based studio Beamdog. What started as a short-term placement through the Mosquers program turned into an ongoing role.

“He was able to identify things that were struggles for us,” Pearce says, “and bridge the film side, taking his Unreal Engine knowledge and bringing that into the film in a new way we hadn’t approached yet.”

Nazzal was given a longer-term role on set through the end of post-production this spring, using Gaussian Splats scanning technology to adapt a game engine build so scenes can be shot in repeatable takes.

A Different Way of Thinking

The hardest part of his transition from video game to film, he says, has been the mindset shift. In engineering, you build things that hold up in every scenario. In film, it just has to look right on screen.

“As long as it appears to do what it’s supposed to on screen, you’re good,” he says.

His advice for anyone trying to make a similar jump: put your own work out there and use the audience you build as leverage.

“Ideas are cheap,” he says. “Stories that capture an audience aren’t.”

Real-time engines like this are showing up on more and more sets. Nazzal's path, from Epic Games to a film crew in Edmonton, might be less of a one-off and more of a preview of where the screen industry is headed.